Podge’s Belgian Beer Tours 2018

Guild member Chris Pollard (Podge) has shared dates for his Beer Tours during 2018.

On 8 March 2018 Podge & Siobhan will be hosting a Trappist Beer Tasting at the Arcade Street Tavern, 1 Arcade Street, IP1 1EX Ipswich, Suffolk. Tickets can be bought. Starts at 19:30hrs.

We will be appearing with our massive Belgian Beer Bar at Chelmsford Summer Beer Festival from Tuesday 10 – Saturday 14 July 2018, with a bigger bar than ever with some specials, but do note that the originally announced dates have been moved on a week on to accommodate the FIFA World Cup. Come and see us.

TOUR 91 / Beer & Battlefields 1918 Spring Offensive Anniversary Tour – Friday 16 March – Wednesday 21 March 2018. We have now finalised the completed timed itinerary for this Tour which you can see here. We have two or three rooms left if you would like to join Podge & Siobhan on this tour at short notice, no problem. Read More.

Tour 92 / Belgian Beer from the Wood – Thursday 3 May – Tuesday 8 May 2018. This tour is based at the excellent four-star Hotel Keizershof in the beery city of Aalst where we will explore old Flemish Reds & Browns, Lambic beers and barrel-aged beers. This Tour will include a day experiencing the fourth biennial Rondje Roodbruin, a one-day tour around the traditional breweries producing the world-renowned Flemish Red-Brown beers. We have lined up lots of new breweries and cafes, see below:

Struise Browers in Oostvleteren where we hope to visit their brewery and barrel room.

Verzet brewers in Anzegem, the innovative young friends who are coming up with some great beers – including oak-aged ones.

Alvinne Brewery in Moen – the trailblazer of modern Flemish beer aging in wood.

Rodenbach brewery in Roeselare, the grand-daddy of all Belgian brewers from the wood. If you have never been, this vast brewery and its cathedrals of foeders make it possibly the most beautiful and photogenic brewery in Belgium, and probably the world. Here we will have a brewery tour* and tasting*.

3Fonteinen Lambic O droom in Lot. Legendary 3 Fonteinen brewer/blender Armand Debelder and his partners spent much of 2016 converting a former warehouse into a new complex designed to centralise the breweries operations and allow visitors to see the end-to-end making of Lambic beer. As we will see, it houses a coolship, blending facilities, barrel-ageing rooms, a bottling plant, a bar, tasting rooms and a shop. A brewery will be added in due course. We’ll have a tour* and a taste of Armand’s lambic here*.

Oude Maalderij (The Old Maltings) in Izegem. Up to recently Jef’s beers were cuckoo brewed at various breweries around Flanders, but late 2016 he started brewing in an impressive brewery constructed on site. He brews a range of barrel aged being Qantelaar Oak Aged, Leviathan (a barley wine aged in Ardbeg whisky barrels), The Kraken (a barley wine aged in Andalusian brandy barrels and Chtulhu, a blend of the last two. We will have an oak-aged tasting at Jef’s*.

Toye Brewery in Marke on the outskirts of Kortrijk. Geert hand built this brewery which took him three years to get into production using bits of old breweries he had collected over the years. He also went on a welding course so that he could stick them together. His main production is Goedendag (Good Day and also the name for the pikes used in the Battle of the Golden Spurs – have a close look at the bottle label) which is an 8%abv blond beer but he now has a brown and a barrel-aged beer and we will have a tour* and tasting* in his tasting room.

OostEke Brewery at Gavere. Here we will be sampling some their oak aged beers which are very good indeed.

Tilquin Lambic Blender in Rebecq.

Belgoo Brewery in Sint-Pieters-Leeuw and the very new Lambiek Fabriek Koolship.

Restaurant-Bierherberg De Smidse in Alsemberg.

We hope to visit the new Brouwerij Feniks which is in the old Alvinne Brewery and brewing some of the best new brews coming out of Flanders.

We will have a unique beer and chocolate tasting experience at a café in Bavegem. On this tour we will arrange special opening of the beer café, shop and tasting room Ambarosa in Aalst so that we can try some regional East Flanders beers including the superb and hard to find Glazen Toren beers. The price for this Tour is £835 per person based on sharing a twin or double room. If you would like a room of your own the single supplement is £235. If you are travelling alone and want to share a room with another traveller, please contact Podge as we are regularly able to pair up travellers in twin rooms to avoid the need for payment of the single supplement. If you want to join us on this Tour please send me the deposit of £150 deposit per person. Read More.

For those of you who travel to Belgium independently, or if you just want to know more about beer cafes and beer tourism in Belgium, check out my Belgian City Bar Guide online maps which now cover the whole of the country. Read More.